Natural Solution May Be Best For Landfill

June 21, 2002|By JESSE LEAVENWORTH; Courant Staff Writer

NEW HARTFORD / BARKHAMSTED — Nature, time and regular testing should complete the containment and cleanup of a landfill listed as one of the most polluted sites in the nation, federal environmental officials have decided.

Now, those officials and the towns and businesses charged with remediation of the old dump on the New Hartford-Barkhamsted line are negotiating how to divide the cost of that monitoring and associated costs. The total bill in this phase of the cleanup is estimated at about $4 million, officials said Thursday.

For about 14 years in the 1970s and `80s, Regional Refuse Disposal District No. 1 (RRDD1) accepted business waste products such as sludge, oily metal grindings and solvents. After the federal government classified many of those materials as hazardous, the landfill was placed on the federal Superfund list, designating the nation's worst toxic waste sites. In 1997, the state allocated about $4 million to cap the landfill, and that was completed in 1999.

The approximately 25 parties listed as responsible for the contamination -- including the refuse district, businesses and the towns of New Hartford, Barkhamsted, Winsted and Colebrook -- have paid about $4 million for a study of cleanup solutions, RRDD1 administrator Jim Hart said.

Since the source of contamination had been sealed under a thick cap, the study focused on how to clean up polluted groundwater emanating from the dump, located off Route 44. One option was to do nothing beyond monitoring ground and surface water and soil every five years for at least 30 years. The two most expensive options involved extracting groundwater at the site, treating it to remove contaminants and releasing the treated water into a brook.

However, because tests show that the so-called toxic plume of groundwater at the site has been receding, the federal Environmental Protection Agency decided last year on an option called ``monitored natural attenuation,'' EPA site manager Byron Mah said.

Natural attenuation relies on soil, air, water and microbes to transform, absorb and dilute pollutants. For example, microbes digest some chemicals and release them as water and harmless gases.

But this is not a do-nothing approach, the EPA says. Additional monitoring wells will have to be dug at the site and testing will have to continue for about 16 years, Mah said. The work also involves much chemical analysis to ensure that the natural remedy is working, he said.

The responsible parties are now negotiating among themselves -- and as a group, with the EPA -- about the cost of the work and how to divide the bill, Hart said.